Shaun King is a graduate of Morehouse College, a historically black school in Atlanta, where he felt protected from racism.

Historically black colleges and universities hold a special place in my heart.

I graduated from Morehouse College, an HBCU for men, and my wife graduated from Spelman College, an HBCU for women. My years at Morehouse, as an activist and as student government president, shaped my entire life. My wife, who is an elementary school teacher today, was forever impacted by her time at Spelman. She met her best friends there and learned lessons about womanhood and teaching that she uses every single day.

So many women and men from Spelman and Morehouse get married that there’s a name for us: SpelHouse couples. Our children are called SpelHouse babies. It's a very real thing. We've already taken our girls to Spelman many times to prepare them to attend school there one day, and I take my son to Morehouse every single chance I get. Going back there is like going home. For many of us, HBCUs were like incubators that protected us from many of the harsh realities of racism in the outside world. At Morehouse, we actually loved our black police officers. They were like uncles who were paid to keep us safe. The spaces are far from perfect, but for four years, your time at an HBCU is a bit of a respite from the ugliness of the world.

It's been painful for me to see young black students at the University of Missouri experience racism on campus head on. Like hundreds of other HBCU graduates, when I first began hearing stories about Missouri students being called racial slurs to their faces and having feces or cotton balls spread over their sacred spaces, my knee-jerk reaction was to wish they all attended HBCUs so they could avoid that overt racism. Black students at the University of Missouri represent just 7% of the total student population and are regularly made to feel like second-class citizens there. It's despicable.

However, you cannot allow your love for the HBCU experience to cause you to lack compassion for the pain our sisters and brothers attending predominantly white institutions are experiencing. First off, as Dr. King said, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." When racism is allowed to go unchecked in one space, including a university, it will not stay within the confines of that campus, but instead, will spread throughout that city and state. Furthermore, when racism on predominantly white college campuses goes unchecked, it teaches the hundreds of thousands of young white students, who will soon be young white graduates, that racism, be it in the workplace or elsewhere, is acceptable. It isn't.

Spelman College is a historically black college for women, also in Atlanta.

(Raymond Boyd/Getty Images)

Not only that, but the majority of HBCU graduates also choose predominantly white universities for grad school. Almost every single Morehouse and Spelman grad I know who went on to earn graduate degrees did so from the top, predominantly white universities all over the country — including the University of Missouri. While we were all spared the racism they are facing during our undergraduate years, we will one day likely attend these schools ourselves.

Also, in many instances, our tax dollars underwrite and support predominantly white public institutions. To ignore the racism in an institution you may actually be helping to fund isn't just short-sighted, it's dumb.

Ultimately, the larger and more important point must always be that racism, wherever it may be found, is not just wrong, but dangerous. No student, of any background, should be discriminated against in any place.

The bravery and determination of students at the University of Missouri is inspiring students all over the country to stand up for justice and equality. It'd be a shame if you missed it because your experience was so different from theirs.